On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 03:17:07AM +0200, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: > On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 1:03 AM, Russell Standish <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > > > Well done for being obtuse! The platonically malleable urstuff is > > usually taken to be integer arithmetic, although any system capable of > > universal computation will do, such as Bruno's combinators > > example. > > > You appear to be making the dog chase its tail.
? > > > > But conscious does not supervene on that, for the reasons > > given in my paper, but rather on sheaves of computations that make it > > up, by assumption of COMP. > > > Not in your sense of requiring physical, concrete realizations: why do we > need those? We don't, if by "concrete" you mean what Bruno means by it. > What are they and how do we avoid attributing originality to > all your doppelgangers distributed in UD if such is given? > originality? > > > It also must supervene on the emergent > > phenomenal physics that arises. That is a raw empirical fact that no > > pussy-footing around can eliminate. > > The MGA demonstrates the > > fundamental contradiction between COMP and physical supervenience in a > > non-robust universe, consequently the only way to save COMP is for the > > universe to be robust. > > > > You pretend that this is common sense. That's much less clear to me. > This stuff is far from common sense. It is a simple matter of logic, however. If you accept the empirical fact of physical supervenience (as I do, and indeed also have arguments for why it must be so - see the Occam Catastrophe discussion in my book), then the fact that the MGA forces a contradiction between physical supervenience and computational supervenience in a non-robust universe really just says there is a choice: either we live in a robust universe, or computationalism is false. The fact that we additionally observe quantum phenomena really supports the idea we live in a robust universe. In a non-robust universe, quantum phenomena is just weird. Additionally, in a robust universe, the Church-Turing thesis tells us that physics we supervene on must be emergent from the properties of universal systems (Bruno's reversal result). Thus the matter we supervene on cannot be "primitive". The primitive urstuff is something else entirely - the arithmetic of integers, perhaps, as Bruno suggests - but not matter as we know it. > > > > > You may think robust universes are baroque, but I don't. Infinite, > > symmetrical ensembles of universes are simpler from an information > > theoretic perspective than specific finite instances. This is > > ultimately the strongest argument in favour of platonism. > > > > > But there is a sense that nature doesn't have to play by our > > rules. Maybe we really do live in a non-robust universe. If so, we > > cannot have our COMP and eat it. > > > > I don't see how stating that UD (straight, not shaken or stirred with > Quantum computer material stuff actualizing) is too cumbersome to realize > physically wherever it is that we are, ie assuming non-robustness (which IMHO is virtually equivalent to assuming ultrafinitism - like Norm Wildberger's position). gives you convincing leverage > concerning consciousness relating to experiential outcome of some A/B > experiment, as the relation of selection is invariant for delays and > locations of reconstitution. > It demonstrates an inconsistency between physical supervenience and computational supervenience, notably that physical supervenience entails that certain very simple computations, such as the replaying of a recording, will be conscious. This only works in a non-robust universe, however, a point that is often overlooked in treatments of this. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
